


Plan Alpha Bingo

by odd_izzy



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Family Bonding, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, batfamily
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 03:04:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16568417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odd_izzy/pseuds/odd_izzy
Summary: After a long and difficult fight against a large group of Gotham criminals, Bruce and Alfred decide that the kids need a break. The break? Several days of fun family bonding time in the form of a competitive prank war in the miles of tunnels underneath the Wayne Estate. What could possiby go wrong?Written as a prize for chibi_luna_chan for being the first winner of my contest on Do Cats Eat Bats? chapter 9.





	Plan Alpha Bingo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chibi_luna_chan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibi_luna_chan/gifts).



> Thank you for reading! I really struggled with the 'prank war' prompt until I decided to move away from everything that had been done before in this fantastic genre and turn things on their head a little. I hope you like it, especially the wonderful chibi_luna_chan for whom it was written! This was originally intended to be a one-shot, but here we are. Enjoy!

**Chapter One**

Steph wiped her forehead before the sweat could drip in her eyes. The war had been going on so long. She barely remembered how it started at this point, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t let her guard down for a second. That was when they would strike.

She faced the door in front of her, not knowing what threats it might hide. Checking her surroundings, she made sure to look up at the ceiling, checking the nearby vents, and testing the floorboards. She pulled out a piece of wire from her pocket, unspooling it and carefully pushing the door open a crack with it. When nothing happened, she pulled out a small mirror from her pocket and attached it to the end of the wire with a butchered hairgrip. Carefully sliding it around the crack she had made in the door, she checked the ceiling directly above the entrance to the room, checked either side of the door, and raised her arm so she could see the reflection of the floor.

Not letting herself relax, she nonetheless felt confident enough to open the door wide enough for her to get through it and no wider, and slid into the room. Then she shut the door behind her as quietly as possible. The longer she could keep them from finding her, the better. She might actually be safe here for a while. But she couldn’t fool herself into thinking they were very far behind.

**Three days earlier**

They were all sat around the long table in the Batcave in somewhat comfortable quiet, steadily eating the mountain of sandwiches Alfred had brought and winding down. After the hours of adrenaline they had been through following the mass breakout at Blackgate, they were exhausted.

Everyone was in disarray: Dick was lying sideways across his chair, with his legs and back bending over both arms of the chair, the Nightwing costume taken off from his top half as Damian cleaned and bandaged a nasty cut near his waist that would have been tricky to reach alone. Damian himself was the only one completely out of his costume, since he had had an unknown chemical thrown at him at some point and had to get out of the costume and shower immediately upon returning to the Cave. He was wearing sweatpants and an old sweatshirt of Dick’s: it said ‘BHPD’ across the front and was much too big for him.

Normally someone would be cooing over how cute it was or mocking the two of them, but the usual culprits were too tired. Steph was still in her Batgirl boots, but had taken off the rest of the suit to examine a tear in the fabric across the back and had ended up in some of Cass’s spare clothes. Luckily for her Cass liked baggy clothes, since she was a little curvier than Cass and the spare clothes fit her perfectly. Steph had her arms crossed on the table in front of her and her head resting on top of them, to all appearances asleep. The only sign she wasn’t was the hand that periodically reached out and grabbed another sandwich.

Jason was sorely tempted to make fun of Dick letting Damian mother him, but he was preoccupied with Alfred fussing over him and the small bullet hole in his arm. As far as he was concerned, the worst damage was to his favourite leather jacket, but Alfred had insisted. He had him taking off not just the ruined jacket, but also the top part of his body armour, leaving him in a thin tank top – not ideal for the chilly cave. When he started shivering, Alfred actually left in the middle of bandaging the arm he had just finished stitching and came back a minute later with a steaming mug of hot chocolate. He remembered how much Jason hated being cold from when he was younger and brought him what used to be his favourite comfort drink. Jason cradled it with the hand of his uninjured arm and stopped complaining about the fussing.

Alfred went over to Bruce when he had finished with Jason and was about to ask about injuries when Bruce just looked at him and raised a finger to his lips. Stepping closer, he could see that Bruce’s removed cape had been appropriated – Cass was curled up on his lap asleep with the cape wrapped around her like a blanket. She had changed out of the top part of her suit and cowl and replaced it with an enormous sweater that had to belong to either Bruce or Jason. For his part, Bruce had clearly got as far as removing his cape and pulling down the cowl before sitting down to debrief and ending up not being able to move without fear of waking his daughter.

That just left Tim, who hadn’t needed an injury check since he had arrived back long before the others: a lucky escapee had managed to toss him into the water, and ever since he had lost his spleen infection was such a big risk for him that he had been sent straight home (to little complaint). He had taken off his waterlogged cape and costume, changing into practise sweats and sitting with a giant towel still wrapped around him. He seemed not to notice the fact that he was still wearing his cowl, but that may be because he had fallen asleep. Alfred couldn’t tell with the cowl on, and didn’t want to risk waking him to check.

In the cavernous space, the only sounds cutting into the deafening silence were the humming of the Batcomputer, Dick and Damian’s soft murmuring to each other, quiet munching as the sandwiches disappeared, and what might have been light snores coming from Tim. They were all too tired for the normal kidding around and making fun of each other that would come after a debriefing, content to just sit in silence and nurse their wounds.

Alfred marvelled at the silence – with almost the entire family there, the Batcave was never this quiet. The Blackgate breakout had really been all hands on deck, and he had been helping Barbara coordinate things for the last few hours while she worked on finding the breach in the computer system that had allowed someone from outside the prison to hit the ‘open all doors’ button. He knew exactly how much running and jumping and punching all of them had been doing, and not for the first time he felt nostalgic for the stamina he had had in his younger years. For now, though, this sombre mood shouldn’t be allowed to continue another minute, lest half of his charges remember that they didn’t get on with the other half. It was time to implement a plan he and Bruce had designed for just such an occasion, when the kids were all home and needed a distraction and a way to wind down after a long period of strenuous activity and stress.

His mind made up, he walked back around the table to Bruce, with Cass still on his lap, and smiled as his eldest charge looked up at him. “You want to initiate Plan Alpha Bingo, Alfred?” Bruce said; his smile growing as Alfred failed to mask his surprise at the apparent mind-reading.

“Yes, Master Bruce, I think this is the time for it. You could all use a break to have a little fun, it will stop the injured from finding anything to do to pull their stitches, and quite frankly you’ve been putting it off, sir.”

“I suppose that with everyone here, I don’t have any more reasons to put it off, do I? And we could all use it. Go ahead, activate it now. We’ve all eaten, we have clothes ready for everyone to wear anyway and we have enough showers that it won’t take long to get everyone clean. You’re in charge, but everything we need should be taken care of - so you’re welcome to do whatever you would like for the next five days. Barbara knows what to do in an emergency.”

Alfred sighed happily at the prospect of finally being able to get into Master Damian’s room and wash the bedding of his menagerie. A smell Alfred believed could be weaponised was coming from that room, and Alfred the cat was the prime suspect. It wouldn’t be the first time he had been caught dragging something inside that then rotted. Master Damian seemingly hadn’t noticed.

He walked over to the Batcomputer and pulled up the list of Alpha protocols, selected the subfolder entitled ‘Bingo’ and used his thumbprint and retinal scan to open the file. Taking a quick look back over his shoulder at the group of people he wouldn’t see outside of a screen for the next few days, he selected ‘activate’ and pressed ‘enter’.

 

* * *

 

 

A few things changed instantly. First, a thin steel wall came up through the floor and separated off several areas of the Cave – the Batcomputer area was blocked off, with a route left for Alfred to the elevator (also inaccessible from the rest of the Cave). The area where all of their vehicles had been parked after a hasty return once the Blackgate disaster was over was closed off – there would be no access to the Batmobile, other larger Bat vehicles, or any of their bikes for the next few days. The walls of gadgets and trophies had shutters come down in front of them, and the bin where Jason was required to deposit his guns before entering the main part of the cave had a lid slide over the top.

By the time anything else started happening, the tired vigilantes were paying attention. Dick had leapt to his feet, Damian right beside him, staring at the new wall that was blocking their view of and access to the Batcomputer. Jason had dropped his beloved jacket on the floor and was looking angrily at the gun basket turned safe that had no locking mechanism for him to break or pick. Cass just looked up at Bruce, tilting her head at him with the bemused look on her face that she always got when she was confused about something but didn’t believe herself to be in any danger. The first time he remembered seeing it was at her first birthday party, when everyone was singing to her.

He just smiled and pulled his daughter so she was sitting up in his lap. “You’ll see.”

And so they all saw, as a black cuboid descended from where it had been stored near the top of the cavern among the bats. It came down to land without a sound in front of the new wall blocking the Batcomputer , and now they were seeing it close up it was clear it was a block of lockers, or maybe safety deposit boxes. The front of each of the boxes on the bottom row had a symbol etched into it – a stylised picture of Jason’s helmet, a purple bat shape, a blue symbol matching the one on the Nightwing costume. There was one for all of them.

Even Tim was fully alert by this point, and was the only one apart from Bruce not already standing and poking at the cuboid. And Jason, but that was because he was trying to pry open the gun bin with a knife he still had on him.

Bruce cleared his throat, and they all turned to look at him, still sat at the head of the table. “Welcome,” he said, “to the Alpha Bingo programme. For the next few days, we aren’t going to leave the caves underneath the Wayne Estate. Nobody is to be killed, maimed, or otherwise seriously injured if at all avoidable. All of your non-lethal skills are fair to use. Everything you still have access to is fair game, but I would advise you to rely most heavily on the things in your box, and wearing the GPS bracelets with panic buttons you’ll find in there is mandatory in case you get lost. They are also colour coded to tell you which team you’re on.”

The kids all stared blankly at him, still not really understanding what was going on.

Bruce sighed. “There are miles and miles of tunnels that I’ve been excavating for years. There are several entrances to the system in the Batcave that were just uncovered when the activation started. We could all use a bit of fun, and Clark and Diana only helped with the excavation on the basis of the tunnels then being evaluated for suitability as a JLA training area. So, kids…” he rubbed his hands together and gave them a rare grin. “It’s time for a little prank war.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you would like your own Batfamily fic written by me, head over to my story 'Do Cats Eat Bats?' and look for more information in the end notes of chapter 9. There are still two prizes available and no deadline!


End file.
